DEROS was - perhaps - the number two priority of those serving in the Viet Nam war (the number one priority was staying alive to make one's DEROS). DEROS was "Date Estimated to Return from Overseas." It was the "go home" date. DEROS was the date on which all countdown calendars were based.
The DEROS date was the arbitrator of all arguments over who was "shorter;" as in "I'm so short I can't even finish this conversation with you," and "Oh yeah? I am so damn short I can't even
start a conversation
with you!"
An approaching DEROS date made people nuts. During my last seven days "in-country" - released from all flying duty - a cobra sighting in Cam Ranh Bay had me carrying a loaded .38 revolver and flashlight to and from the officers club, which I closed down on most of those nights. Scary!
Two days before my DEROS, I caught a Navy C-117 (super DC-3 with a squared off tail) down to Saigon. The C-117, which two buds of mine from NAF Cam Ranh Bay piloted, had no seats in the back. Absolutely no seats. The passenger cabin was just a polished aluminum floor with recessed cargo tie-down tracks. But they got me to Tan Son Nhut, safely.
After out-processing from my ASA (Army Security Agency) masters' headquarters (top-secret, crypto, code-word) - where I signed all sorts of documents that I never been where I had been or done what I had done - I vamoosed to
the USAF BOQ where an uncle (bird colonel F-4 driver) had secured me a room. I cleaned up, changed into mufti, and joined my uncle at the Tan Son Nhut Officers Open Mess (
TSNOOM, not as cute as the Danang Officers Open Mess -
DOOM). We sat at a table where he (a bird colonel) and I (a chief warrant officer) were the junior officers. All his buds were general officers.
So I drank Mateus with a gaggle of brigadier and major generals, with a Filipino band on the stage, until we were all Fox-Uniform. I had a blast - on first name basis - with those generals. It's too bad I did not then know about the Gen. Bob Worley shoot-down (Strobe Zero-1 - a RF4C) to pick their brains on that clusterf***. To this day the thought of Mateus gags me.
I was smart enough to sober up enough to make my flight out of Saigon on 9/30/71. Never, ever, miss your DEROS flight.
When I boarded the Contintal DC-8 (stretched), a bunch of hoots sounded above the general happy noise of the big Douglas jet (flight school classmates with the same DEROS date). I landed a seat next to one of my favorite flight school classmates. We hollered and whooped until the big jet started taxiing to the runway.
It got real quiet then. I knew every nook and cranny of Tan Son Nhut, so I sat in panic as we sat in a long line of fighters and C-130s for take off. I knew where the VC/NVA rocket batteries were registered. Finally, we made the two 90-degree turns to align with the takeoff runway.
The power was applied to the DC-8, and I was pushed back - slightly - into my seat as the big jet accelerated down the Saigon runway. The four 18,000-lb thrust P&W JT3D-3Bs roared. The takeoff run on that hot September day in Saigon seemed like miles.
Finally the big stretched Douglas DC-8 rotated and lifted off. Unless you were in Viet Nam and experienced this escape from a crazy war, you would never understand what happened at the point of liftoff. We lucky ones whooped and cheered (like nothing you have ever heard) and the flight attendants cried. What an emotional experience!
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